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Message: [QUOTE="IthacaMatt, post: 126296, member: 405"] Michael Carter-Williams has done some eye-opening things in his limited minutes. In about half as many minutes as Brandon Triche, Michael has 15 defensive rebounds to Triche's 11. (And we tend to think of Triche as a good rebounder because he's a big guard, but about half of Brandon's rebounds so far have been offensive boards.) Michael's 15 defensive rebounds, in fact, compare favorably to his much larger classmate, Rakeem Christmas, who only has 2 more than Michael, in about equal minutes played. When it comes to assists, of course he had the one game with 8 that inflated his statistics, but he has 28 assists in about half the minutes of Triche and Dion; they have 35 and 34, respectively. And we think they've been doing a fairly decent job sharing the ball so far, compared to last year. Now, compare Michael to Scoop, who also has about double his minutes, and Scoop's got 44 assists so far on the year. Not bad for the part-time minutes he's been playing, averaging 4 a game; down from last year's 5.9, but he isn't playing that many minutes yet. On a minute for minute basis, Michael would be averaging about 25% more assists per minute than Scoop, on par with how Scoop did last year (which happened to lead the league). His turnovers per minute are slightly less than Triche and Dion, and noticeably better than Scoop, by about 50% fewer per minute played. Michael, although he has looked a bit shaky a couple times with his handle in the first couple games, is arguably our best ball handler and distributor to this point. He is also 4th on the team in blocked shots (!), with 50% more than C.J. or Kris (again, in half or less than half the minutes), and twice as many as fellow guards Dion and Triche (again, in half the minutes). His steals per minute are right up there with Scoop, although a bit behind Dion. (Southerland is really doing an outstanding job with the steals, too, which makes up a bit for his lack of rebounding so far...) Anyway, long post to say that the numbers indicate that when Scoop passes through at the end of the year, Carter-Williams ought to be ready to handle more minutes. He's doing remarkably well for a freshman point guard so far, although it probably helps him a lot to have 3 experienced guys to pass it to, if he gets too much pressure. [/QUOTE]

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